MeyerBros

sexism showdown in the blogosphere

Interesting (and, not surprisingly, somewhat fiery) conversations in the blogosphere recently about diversity, gender, exclusion, and affirmative action in the web-geek world. Our favorite Meyerbro homonym web-geek Eric Meyer started things off by posting his personal manifesto about why he doesn’t care about diversity, and why when he plans conferences he chooses speakers based purely on “merit” and without considering gender or race. (To borrow liberally from the pithy genius of the other Eric Meyer: “Race and gender are irrelevant. That’s what I (white male) always (white) say (male).”)

(update: I shouldn’t have given Eric Meyer credit for “kicking things off” - he was responding to this Jason Kottke post where he simply lists the percentage of female presenters at various recent “webby” conferences.)

Tantek quickly weighed in with his thoughts, in which he a) blames women for not taking enough initiative to promote themselves in the industry, and b) wonders why nobody is concerned about including enough green-eyed people. (”It’s women’s fault for not working hard enough. And anyway, gender doesn’t make any more difference than eye color. That’s what I (male) always (male) say (male).”)

Then Anil Dash jumped into the fray and chastised Eric Meyer and John Gruber for “defending the boys-only nature of [their] treehouse,” and followed it up by offering a list of “the essentials of Web 2.0 your event doesn’t cover”, following which he notes “Where are the men? Don’t worry - the door is open to them. As soon as one of you has done something with the impact of Flickr…”

Today things took an interesting twist. Apparently Eric Meyer (the non-Meyerbro one) is doing some serious soul-searching about all of this, which is great. (Though apparently there hasn’t been sufficient soul-searching yet for him to stop trying to defend the innocent goodness of what he was “really trying to say”).

In all seriousness, wrestling with privilege — with the stupidity and blindness it sometimes causes us to display, even with the best of intentions — is really gut-wrenching stuff, and I wish Eric all the best. I hope he can come to a place where he might even recognize that “what he was really trying to say” itself might have been coming from a place of privilege and ignorance, and that “who he really is” is a good person whose identity, like all of us with privilege, has been deeply warped and shaped by the blindness of privilege.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 24th, 2007 at 5:46 pm by carl and is filed under anti-racism, geeky, web 2.0, gender, anti-sexism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

7 Responses to “sexism showdown in the blogosphere”

Sara Says:

February 24th, 2007 at 6:42 pm

Well said. I agree that ignorance is a big undercurrent here..I remind myself of that and take big breaths so as not to get too angry.
eric Says:

February 25th, 2007 at 3:00 am

i LOVE sexism. (did that come out right?) What I was trying to say is: this stuff can get real funny (read infuriating) to watch. Sometimes people just don’t make much sense.

Sometimes it’s in the church.

an NPR guest had a funny comment today on the difference between the Dems and Repubs - illustrated by a conflict between Obama’s campaign adviser and Clinton. (This ties in, at least sort of, I promise). The difference being that Repub conflicts are between a bunch of rich white hetero guys, while the Dem conflicts can be a rich gay guy causing trouble between a rich black guy and a rich white woman.
Sheri Says:

February 25th, 2007 at 1:28 pm

I think this is an evocative commentary on the current debate. As a woman, I experience the other side of this gender diversity argument first hand. As human with a privilege bias, I think I’m probably guilty of the some “ignorance” and “blindness” in different ways. Your post caused me to think about what I have in life and come to realize that an argument about gender bias in the world of web is quite distant from some of the things in life that are truly important–like family, health, and happiness. So now, I will hope that good things come out of this conversation.
eric Says:

February 27th, 2007 at 12:20 pm

So, now I’ve done my reading, and found it very frustrating. The entire conversation is dominated by men patting each other on the back and blaming women for not taking the initiative. They are all so progressively color and gender blind, as is the web, and women have absolutely nothing to complain about. It’s an argument I’ll start buying after several millennia of female domination to even the score.

if we’re going to play fair, let’s really play fair.

You don’t get to ignore history just because it wasn’t your idea.
carl Says:

February 27th, 2007 at 12:26 pm

Yeah. After his Feb 24 post I thought EM might have been challenged enough to really shift his thinking, but then yesterday he posted a set of “diverse links” that are mostly links to other men defending him and themselves. Ah well.
MeyerBros » More on the patriarchy Says:

March 5th, 2007 at 12:30 pm

[…] Issues of patriarchy and sexism have become my central reading over the last week since Carl posted about sexism in the web design community, and someone sent me a link to I Blame The Patriarchy. It’s a great read, with interesting critiques of some more subtle and complex issues involved in patriarchy, and has become one of my favorite RSS feeds. […]
MeyerBros » patriarchy and me(n) Says:

March 8th, 2007 at 4:05 pm

[…] I was just reminded at Ilyka’s that today is not only International Women’s Day, but also blog against sexism day. So I thought it would be a good time to take a break from our other recent conversations and, um, blog against sexism. […]